


nice to meet you

by mandopopguin



Category: Neru家 | Neruke
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - Demons, I wrote this in like 3 hours, Wildly Inaccurate Depictions of Human Interactions, im not sure if this is english at this point, my city now, neruke tag is dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-04
Updated: 2019-10-04
Packaged: 2020-11-23 08:14:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,562
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20888948
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mandopopguin/pseuds/mandopopguin
Summary: Tsuji and Azuma have been bouncing around jobs for a while, and this security gig for some ritzy corporate dinner doesn't seem like anything out of the ordinary until a handful of demons crash the party.





	nice to meet you

**Author's Note:**

> u know that feeling when ur japanese TA looks at you with such disappointment in her eyes that u feel morally compelled to review all the vocab u have ever learned? well thats what im doing, except in the worst way possible. first jp vocab writing prompt: どうぞよろしくお願いいたします

The McMansion Tsuji and Azuma are working in is pretty run-of-the-mill for overly elaborate and poorly designed rich people housing. It's hosting a party today, sure, but that doesn't really cover the fact that Tsuji can see awkward reflections of the really ugly roof in weird wall angles from the sad nook he's crammed into.

(He's, uh, out of sight, out of mind. The partygoers would be more freaked by some twenty-something twink with a security badge than the terrible, terrible palette choices this house is boasting, apparently.)

"I spy with my little eye something green," Azuma says, eyes firmly set nowhere near anything green, because Tsuji is pretty much good at nothing but cheating.

"Uh," Tsuji says, glancing through the monstrous dining hall/ballroom/design disaster he's monitoring. Everything in the room is beige. If you have enough money to buy a mansion, why not hire a competent interior designer? "That lady's dress?"

"Nope," Azuma says, eyes still fixed on some dark corner across the hall.

Tsuji rubs his eyes and scans the crowd again. It's a formal enough event that most of the patrons have settled for sensibly subdued colors, and green's not really in with the formal scene right now.

Moving on: all the decorations are white or gold. Formal. Mildly intricate, but still too minimalistic to fit in with the style of the room. Incredibly boring. Not green.

It's past 10 PM, so whatever empty lawn hellscape is sitting outside the ballroom windows isn't visible enough to be what Azuma's pointedly not looking at. There aren't any plants in the room, either (sad). No hints of chartreuse in the lifeless beige wall paint. No olive-ish detailing on the decorated marble floors--

Tsuji audibly gasps. "Is that guy wearing lime green Crocs?"

"With charms in the holes," Azuma says, sounding something between smug and horrified.

"I should've worn Crocs," Tsuji says.

"No, you shouldn't have." (It's a good thing Azuma can pretend to be the voice of reason sometimes, because Tsuji is incapable of having an idea that isn't terrible.) "Your turn."

"I spy with my little eye..." He's exhausted pretty much everything interesting from this mind-numbing company banquet. Those ladies by one of the poorly proportioned pillars haven't moved from their awkward conversation spot in two hours. The classical music on loop in the background is so boring, Tsuji would almost rather sit through math class again. At least the constant confusion kept him awake.

(But he hadn't gotten paid to sit through pre-calc, so this is a slight improvement.)

"...Something red," he finishes.

"That chick's eyeshadow," Azuma says immediately, indicating some lady with bright red eyeshadow up to her eyebrows. There might be some in her eyebrows.

"Yeah," Tsuji groans, resting his head against the wall behind him.

Azuma sighs in response and stretches as much as she can in the confined space. It's breaching some rule to be this visibly relaxed, Tsuji is sure, but he's done security on six identical company banquet... party... events(?) in the last two weeks alone. The worst he's had to deal with in the main area is someone throwing his overpriced and underportioned cake at his ex-wife over alimony.

"Let's play a different game," Azuma suggests.

Tsuji shrugs. "Sure. What do you have in mind?"

"See who can sing annoying songs the loudest before the guests start trying to kill us."

"You're on." Tsuji starts running through all of the annoying songs he knows in his head.

And then the ballroom windows explode.

It's instant pandemonium. Glass and wall chunks ricochet around the room, barely avoiding most of the screaming guests. The lights stay on, by some miracle, and it's about the only comfort Tsuji gets before a table embeds itself in a wall.

"Direct traffic," Tsuji says to Azuma.

She nods. "Go check for casualties."

She jumps into the fray and starts yelling, directing people to the exit, and Tsuji forces his way upstream.

No blood or bodies that he can see. Good. People are screaming and shoving, but nobody's getting trampled, nobody's got a chunk of drywall through their head,  
and what is that. What is that.

Some--some thing with too many teeth and too many eyes stretches its way across the floor, creeping like its limbs aren't set right, hushing the light with every jerked step it takes into the ballroom before it finally stops.

"Good evening, Your Royal Highness," it rasps, like steel wool on a chalkboard, and it moves to grab something--oh, suck, that's a person. It just grabbed a person's head. Nope. Bad. "It is so wonderful to finally meet you."

Tsuji snaps himself out of his gawking episode. He has a job to do.

"Sir, ma'am, or neuter," he yells, "I'm going to have to ask you to leave."

The thing glares at him with a good portion of its eyes before going right back to ignoring him.

Fine! That's fine. He's worked customer service, he has a whole lot of pent-up rage over idiots ignoring him, and he grabs a chair and clocks the thing.

It screams, eyes cracking open to roll in fury, and turns around to slam a clawed hand in his direction.

He sidesteps it and slams the chair legs-first into the things hand, slamming it into the floor with a few sick snaps.

The thing roars. He picks the chair back up and slams it into the eyes rolling at him until it stops swiping at him.

He smashes the chair into its face again for good luck.

"Please fill out the survey on the back of your receipt for a chance to win a store gift card," he says pleasantly. "Thanks for your visit. Have a good day!"

It's a great therapy session, except for the part where he suddenly remembers the thing lying motionless on the floor was creeping on some guest, and he whips around to find some kid who's probably still in high school pinned beneath a mess of tables and the remains of a hideous column looking freaked out of his mind.

Well, that's no good.

"Hey," Tsuji says as comfortingly as he can manage, which probably isn't very comforting because he's still kind of in underpaid cashier mode. He throws his hands up to show he's unarmed. That probably also doesn't actually help. "Are you hurt?"

The kid starts sobbing.

Okay. Tsuji doesn't know how to deal with that, and he probably isn't going to get a straight answer to his question anytime soon, so he starts peeling furniture off the kid instead.

With the amount of garbage crushing the kid, Tsuji's guessing he's at least banged up if not minutes from needing an amputation. Tsuji's alright at first aid, but he doesn't know how to do much more than slap bandages on things, and that's not gonna be real helpful if this kid's in shock or, like, paralyzed from the waist down.

Tsuji grits his teeth. "We can get you to the hospital once--"

"Don't," the kid says, smothered with panicked tears. "Don't, please, I--I can't--"

"Okay, cool, no hospital," Tsuji says hurriedly. "Do you need me to call your parents?"

"Tsuji!" Azuma screams.

Something metal thunks into flesh, and an inhuman screech centimeters behind him sets his ears ringing.

Another monster crumples into the floor beside him, crumpled into an entire TV on impact.

Azuma walks up to him and starts tearing at the mangled mess of furniture like she didn't just chuck a TV at something about to take Tsuji's head off.

"We need to go," she says.

"Yeah." Tsuji helps her push the last table off the kid. There's a lot more blood staining the table and the floor than he's comfortable with.

Azuma says a couple of words that would get her banned from a normal glitzy rich-people party before crouching in front of the kid.

"We need to move you," she says. "Can you feel your legs?"

Right. Spinal damage. The kid nods, though, so they're probably in the clear. Ish.

"I can get him out," Tsuji says. "Start the car. We'll meet you."

Azuma nods and leaves.

Tsuji gets down this time. "I'm gonna pick you up, okay? Yell if you lose feeling in your legs or something."

The kid nods again and takes a shuddering breath.

It doesn't take too long for Tsuji to scoop the kid into his arms bridal-style (it's probably less likely to break stuff. Probably.), ignoring the weird screeching that starts up behind him and taking off for the front exit.

The kid's still crying quietly, but he hasn't started screaming, so Tsuji's going to worry about it after he gets them out of here.

Azuma's already parked in front of the door with their banged-up garage-sale van, the backseat door thrown open, her own self in the driver's seat with the window down.

"Do you need help?" She asks when he hits the overdramatic entry staircase.

"Not yet," Tsuji says, slowing down a bit. Maybe tripping and falling here would be a bad idea. Just a thought.

The kid's pretty obviously in pain, but he has enough mobility to crawl into the back with minimal Tsuji assistance. (He gets blood everywhere, but it's all over Tsuji, anyway, and, uh, should he be contacting some kinda health ssociation about this?)

"You can lie down, if you want," Tsuji says, crawling in and shutting the door.

The kid shakes his head and leans against the door frame, still pulling faces. He's trying to put pressure on what looks like a giant gash in his thigh. It's a miracle it didn't hit an artery.

Well, fine. If he's not lying down, Tsuji's crawling into an actual seat.

Azuma glances back, watches Tsuji awkwardly buckle the kid in, and then pulls the van into some offroad adventure to escape the cops closing in.

"Let me see your leg," Tsuji says, pulling the overstuffed first-aid kit out from underneath the passenger seat in front of him.

The kid nods and peels his hands away with a wince.

His entire pant leg's shredded. There's too much blood for Tsuji to really make out what's going on, so he grabs the baby wipes (what? Better than toilet paper) and waits for a weak nod before wiping away the worst of it.

The wound itself isn't as bad as he thought it was. It's definitely deeper than he's comfortable just slapping a bandage around, but the bleeding's already slowed down quite a bit, and nothing immediately looks broken. If he can still bend that leg, it's probably fine.

"Is anything broken?" Tsuji asks anyway, bundling up some gauze to put pressure on the gash. It'll hold until they can convince this kid to go see an actual medical professional, probably.

"I don't think so," the kid mumbles. His cheeks are still blotchy and his eyes are still wet, but he already looks a lot better than he did when Tsuji picked him up.

"You would probably know," Tsuji says, wrapping up his leg very casually. Very casually. "Uh, we should probably introduce ourselves, since we kind of just kidnapped you. I'm Tsuji; that's Azuma."

"Hey," Azuma says, lifting a hand but not taking her eyes off the road, unlike a certain someone whose name starts with Tsu and ends with ji.

"I'm..." The kid hesitates and scratches at his neck. "Um."

"Yeah, don't sweat it. I probably wouldn't want to give me my name," Tsuji snorts.

"It's not... that," the kid says, eyes glued to his lap. "Could--could you do me a favor?"

"How illegal is it?" Tsuji jokes.

The kid stares at him with some deer-in-the-headlights look that definitely should not have been a response to that joke.

Tsuji doesn't know how to emotionally respond to that reaction. "Wait. Are we talking 'rob a bank,' or--"

"No. Um. Not that. Just..." The kid tugs at the collar of his shirt (it's half-popped, hopefully due to that unfortunate run-in with whatever that monster thing was) until an actual, honestly-swear-Tsuji-wasn't-making-this-up choker pokes out over the top. "Can you help me get this off?"

Okay, whatever Tsuji had been expecting (drive-by? Revenge homicide? Drug trafficking?), it wasn't that, and also he's mildly concerned about whatever is going on with this kid's fashion sense.

If it's some kind of trap, though, Azuma's three feet from him. Won't stop him from getting shot, or something, but it should stop him from getting killed slowly.

"Yeah, sure," Tsuji says. "Where's the, uh, clasp, or whatever?"

The kid bites his lip. "Do you have any scissors?"

Tsuji pulls a pair of scissors out of the first aid kit.

The kid visibly relaxes, which probably isn't the correct reaction to some dude who just dragged you into his van pulling a pair of scissors on you. "I can't find the clasp."

Tsuji decides that thinking this through is taking too much brain power for--he glances at the dashboard--10:34 PM, so he stops doing that.

"You sure you're okay with me going at your neck with a pair of scissors?" He asks.

"Those are safety scissors," the kid deadpans.

Huh. So they are. Note to self: pack a handgun in here.

The kid, understandably, gets a bit twitchy when Tsuji has the scissors against his neck, but it takes under ten seconds to wedge a blade under the choker, snip through it, and peel it off.

The kid takes a deep breath and nestles back into the door frame. Tsuji is glad E is some kind of engineering genius, because they're still driving on some dirt path, and the kid's brains would be scrambled eggs by now if E weren't some kind of folk deity of archaic van suspension.

"Thank you," the kid says, eyes sliding shut, and judging by his breathing, he's already asleep.

"Did he just fall asleep in two seconds?" Azuma asks from the front seat.

"Yeah. Wild."

"Wish I could do that." Azuma taps a finger on the steering wheel. "We, uh, probably should have gotten his address, huh?"

"Yeah."

Azuma nods. "You wanna DJ?"

"Thought you'd never ask."

* * *

The fire escape door on their floor is always unlocked, which probably isn't good for security, but it makes carrying an unconscious kid whose pants look like they went through a blender while coated in his blood into your apartment a lot easier.

"So, do we, like, put him in the bathtub?" Azuma asks as she shoves the door open.

"I was thinking the kitchen, since it's tile, but that's probably better."

"It has a drain, yeah."

"Yeah... But he also might think we took his kidneys."

"We're not taking his kidneys?"

"Oh, man, we're not getting paid for that last gig, are we?"

"It's not our fault a bunch of monsters showed up and trashed the place. The owner's probably got insurance on it, anyway."

"Yeah. So, bathtub?"

"Sure."

Tsuji manages to get his shoes off during that discussion despite carrying an entire unconscious person, so he follows Azuma to the bathroom and lets her open the door and flick the light on for him before his last dredges of critical thinking kick in.

"Wait. I need to shower."

Azuma stops, frowns, and surveys the bloody mess that is Tsuji at the moment.

"Yeah, that blood isn't coming out," she finally says. "You might wanna torch those clothes. I guess we can put him in the kitchen until you finish your hour-long beauty shower."

"I spend less time in the shower than you do."

"Yeah, but I'm cute."

"Keep telling yourself that, nerd."

"Don't be such a bottom about it."

Tsuji pretends to be offended.

Azuma ignores him, but she doesn't ignore the towels she suddenly has remembered exist.

"No, wait," she says. "We can put our extra towels on the couch and put him on there."

"I knew dark brown was a good towel color," Tsuji says wisely, punctuating his incredible intelligence with a nod.

"Keep telling yourself the poop towels were a good idea. I'll go dig the others out of cryogenic stasis."

It takes seven minutes to get the kid situated on the couch, mostly because Azuma keeps worrying he'll fall off, and Tsuji keeps worrying he'll wake up with neck pain. Azuma eventually fights Tsuji off to go shower, though, so he does that and leaves her to fuss about gravity and whatever.

It does not take him an hour to scrub all the blood off his arms. Suck it, Azuma. He walks out in something less bloody, chucks the biohazard fashion line he just modeled for a few hours in the trash can like a responsible person, and makes for the living room.

Azuma is sitting on the floor (not because Mamoru's on the couch; she just does that) and staring at the TV blankly. It isn't even turned on. Tsuji doesn't get the chance to make a stupid comment about it before someone knocks on the door.

"Who and why," Azuma groans.

Tsuji's already standing up, so he has to answer it.

It's some person significantly shorter than Tsuji's line of sight clad in an eyepatch and a jacket several sizes too big.

"I don't want any Girl Scout cookies," Tsuji says.

The person blinks up at him. "That sounds like a personal problem. Are you the one that took out a demon with a chair?"

Tsuji blinks back. "Demon?"

"Yes. With a chair."

Someone else--also with an eyepatch, but taller, in a suit that fits, and with bright blue hair--sidles into Tsuji's field of vision. Something about him feels vaguely familiar, but Tsuji definitely doesn't know him.

"This is the one," blue-hair guy says, nodding.

"Yeah, uh, who are you?" Tsuji asks. "And why are you knocking on my door at one in the morning?"

"I'm Sid," blue-hair guy says amicably. "This is Ruki, my partner in crime."

"We have a business proposition for you," Ruki says monotonously.

"Uh." Tsuji doesn't know how to respond to anything that's happening right now.

Azuma, like an answer to the prayers he hadn't prayed, pops in behind him.

"Sounds cool. You guys wanna come in? I just made waffles."

"You made waffles?" Tsuji asks.

"It's one in the morning. I popped frozen waffles in the microwave. I'm pretty sure they're freezerburnt."

"Wow," Ruki says, still in a straight deadpan. "That's my favorite flavor."

Tsuji doesn't know if that's supposed to be a joke or not, and he doesn't ask. Sid accepts Azuma's invitation like a normal human being, and they're all seated at the coffee table Tsuji decided was big enough to use as a dining table in no time at all.

"So," Azuma says over the waffle she just took a huge chunk out of. "Business proposition?"

"We saw how you handled the invasion at the party tonight," Sid says, politely holding a waffle even though he looks uninterested in eating it. "We think you'd be a great addition to our demon hunter team."

"Demon hunter team?" Tsuji asks, already on his third waffle. They've been sitting for all of thirty seconds.

"We're small and very close-knit, and a recommendation from me is pretty much a guarantee of entry. Name your price."

Tsuji feels like this is the part where he's supposed to argue in circles for half an hour about how demons aren't real, but, again, he's worked retail. He's stared straight into the eyes of the ninth ring of hell walking the earth and told it he'd speak with his manager about the return policy.

"What exactly would we be doing?" He asks instead.

"Killing demons," Ruki says nonchalantly.

"When you join an association, they work you like cattle until you get yourselves killed or promoted," Sid says a little too brightly. "Day-in, day-out missions for about as much as you'd make at McDonalds with thirty times the risk. No reasoning behind your hits; just taking a job from whoever will offer one."

Azuma pulls another waffle off the plate.

"But," Sid continues, "if you join up with us, you can customize your schedule and understand your missions instead of blindly following them. We're small, we're personal, and we're concerned about community. You might be unaware, but the umbrella term 'demons' covers a large selection of nonhumans, many of which are perfectly benevolent and aren't actually demons. We're trying to promote coexistence among other hunter associations."

Tsuji blinks and glances at Azuma. She's staring right back at him.

"Uh, okay," Tsuji says, feeling like he just got a recruitment letter for a fishy high school scam job more than anything. "I didn't realize demons existed until about three hours ago, so--"

"You what," Sid says, smile frozen on his face.

"He didn't realize demons existed until about three hours ago," Ruki says helpfully.

"That's--You took out a level 8 with a chair!"

"A what?" Azuma asks.

"A chair," Tsuji says.

"Thanks," Azuma says, rolling her eyes so hard that she almost falls out of her chair.

"You haven't worked as a hunter already?" Sid asks, looking so thoroughly baffled that Tsuji almost feels sorry for whatever crisis he's having right now.

"I've gone deer hunting once or twice," Tsuji says. (That had been mind-numbingly awful, but he'd had a gun, which had made it less awful.)

"You don't know who the boy on your couch is, then," Sid says.

Tsuji frowns. "Look, I was kind of panicking over him bleeding everywhere and figured we could get to introductions later." (Would he have remembered the kid's name, regardless? Probably not, but, like, that's not the problem here.)

"No, nevermind, that's probably for the better," Sid says, moving to cross his legs.

Something green flashes.

"Well," Sid sighs. "If you aren't--"

It hits Tsuji like a train right then and there.

"You're the Crocs guy!" Tsuji yells, pointing at Sid's shoes. "Dude!"

"Dude?!" Azuma yells back, eyes flicking to Sid's shoes. They are, indeed, hideous lime green Crocs, charms and all. "Dude!"

"Oh, nice shoes," Ruki says absently.

Sid doesn't know how to react to people yelling about his Crocs, apparently, because he just kind of shifts uncomfortably and mutters something about function over form.

Azuma isn't having any of it. "Sir. It is such an honor. Can I have your autograph?"

"I'm sorry, what?" Sid asks.

"You and your glorious shoes were the only thing keeping me sane during that awful party," Tsuji says, on the verge of tears.

If Sid was confused before, it's nothing compared to the straight puzzlement spelled out on his face now.

"Uh, well, these are my favorite shoes," he says quietly. "Ruki got me the charms."

Ruki shrugs.

Azuma pulls a pen and notepad out of who-knows-where and holds them out to Sid. "Please?"

"You were serious about the autograph?" Sid asks, looking mildly excited under the total confusion on his face.

"I don't kid about my heroes," Azuma says solemnly.

Sid shakes his head and signs the notepad.

Azuma looks like she's about to burst into tears. "Thank you. You've saved my life today."

"Uh, anytime," Sid says, smiling through the chaos.

"So, completely unrelated," Tsuji says, "but what were you saying about paying us to smack demons around?"

Sid wasn't kidding about that. The team he had mentioned is a team of demon specialists, including several demons (although, as he had mentioned, the term "demons" is inappropriately applied to several groups that are not demons). He saw the skills in Azuma and Tsuji that they needed on the team, and that was why he was sitting in their open-plan "dining room" holding a waffle he probably wasn't going to eat trying to recruit them.

"I'm in," Tsuji said without a second thought. Or a first thought. There wasn't a whole lot of thinking going on there.

"Me, too," Azuma said, because Tsuji had said he was in.

"Are you sure?" Sid asked, an eyebrow raised. "You did just discover demons exist three hours ago."

"We've made worse decisions on less," Azuma said with a shrug.

And that was that. Sid gives them some details on wages. Azuma and Tsuji know jack all about what demon hunters make, but the offer's a whole lot better than the security gigs they were getting, so they say yes, whatever, sounds wonderful. Sid promises to contact them with more information, and then he and Ruki are out the door.

Azuma swings the door shut.

"So that just happened," she says.

"Yeah," Tsuji says.

"I'm gonna go sleep for twelve hours."

"That sounds like a great plan. I'm doing that, too. Night."

"Night."

* * *

Karasumaru had barely gotten out of solitary when Idola popped in for a visit.

"Hey, sis," he said, fully aware she wasn't visiting for a social call. She didn't get that luxury. He definitely didn't. "What's up?"

"Missed you. The circus was in town; made me sad when I saw the clowns, 'cuz I thought I saw you in there."

"Thought I saw you outside the other day, too. Turned out it was a dead cat."

"Kin," Idola says, before her stupid smile falls.

Karasumaru bites his lip a little too hard. It doesn't start bleeding, but it's pretty close. "Is it Mamoru?"

"It always is, isn't it?" Idola sighs, scratching at her neck. "He's missing."

Karasumaru bites down again, the iron tang flooding his mouth. "Mom and dad better pray they don't see me again."

"Kara, he got attacked," Idola says, and she can't even look him in the eyes right now. "They're after him now, and I don't--What am I supposed to do? I can't finally pull him out of the house, because he's gone--"

Mamoru got attacked.

Idola won't meet his eyes because she's scared of him. She knows what he's done. She knows he's the King, that he's ripped things made of tougher stuff than skin and flesh and bone apart with a half-hearted thought on multiple occasions, and she doesn't know how he's gonna react to this one.

Whatever security guard's patrolling almost loses an arm, but he pulls himself together before that.

"Please," he says, stuffing all his anger and frustration and hopelessness down where he can't feel it for now. There's blood beading up on his lip. "Please find him before something else does."

"I'm trying," she says, and it isn't the spitfire anger she'd throw when someone doubted her in high school. It's just... defeat. "I have no idea what happened. I didn't go to that stupid party. I thought he'd be safer if I stayed away."

It had been inevitable that the higher-level demons would go after Mamoru. Karasumaru knew that, Idola knew that, their awful parents knew that. And what had they done about it? Karasumaru had landed himself in jail trying to do something about it, Idola had disappeared trying to do something about it, and their parents had done nothing about it, as per usual.

Karasumaru barked out a laugh. "We're all useless, huh?"

Idola coughed out a chuckle, doing a very poor job of hiding the fact that she was crying.

Karasumaru tucked himself into bed that night with a half-baked plan, as he tended to do when he was going to do something life-threatening. Whatever. If nobody else could do anything about the situation, he was busting out of here and finding Mamoru himself.

**Author's Note:**

> i might add to this in a million years but im marking it complete for the time being in case i dont get the chance to. thanks for reading :))


End file.
